Rolling over...and not sleeping!

Brody is 16 weeks this week. It's been a roller coaster of highs and lows recently as he is going through some pretty significant new developmental milestones. 12 weeks is a huge shift in babies' sleep cycles, and we have definitely been experiencing what that means for Brody. Naptimes have become super short, inconsistent and sometimes nonexistent, and night sleep is really rough some nights. BUT, he also has been very alert, chatty, interactive and is learning so much about his environment, so I have to remind myself of that in the hard moments!

He has been reaching for and grabbing, and playing with his toys. Current favorites are his jingly owl on his playmat, and a new rattle that we got him. Oh, and his hands trump all else - he loves chewing on them, playing with his fingers, looking at them, etc. He also loves to be held so he can stand on the bathroom counter and look at himself in the mirror. Bathtime is now even more fun as he splashes around! 

He's found his voice for sure! He can make quite a few sounds now: "ooh," "ahh," "mahh," "moo, mo," and he enjoys making high pitched squeals. He's even started to giggle here and there, but he's still figuring that out. 

The biggest new development is that he ROLLED OVER today!! He was on his tummy in his crib and all of a sudden he started leaning over, and then eventually rolled to his back! I placed him back on his tummy and he did this 3 times in a row! He can't quite do it on the ground or more firm surfaces, but the crib gave him enough spring to push off of. :) He has been getting a tad more mobile on the ground when I give him tummy time. He pushed himself several inches by "inchworming" across the floor last night, too. 

Earlier this week, Great Grandma and Great Grandpa babysat so I could go get my haircut! I am losing my hair in handfuls (thank you post-preggo hormone change) and it was getting so unmanageable. I'm not sure if it makes me look more like a "mom" or more like I'm 8 years old, but either way, it's so much easier to deal with. Lately, I have had about 2.5 seconds to deal with myself each day, so I needed something easy. 

Jeff is going to LA on Friday for the day for work, and then we'll celebrate Halloween by walking Queen Anne Avenue to "trick or treat" at all the storefronts (aka - see all the other cute kids).  That night we have a party with some friends, and then Grandma's party the next day. Brody looks pretty cute in his costume... ;) I'll post some pictures of him in it next time I write! 

3 months old!

Brody turns 3 FULL months tomorrow, the 10th. I officially no longer have a newborn. All the books talk about how the first 3 months are kind of like the 4th trimester with the needs of a newborn, and I'm so not wanting this precious, fragile stage to end. Yes, I am thankful for more regular and lengthened sleep times, more consistent and reliable feedings, new and exciting interactions...but my heart is aching that my tiny baby boy is not so tiny anymore.

I wish time would slow down... And it feels cliché saying that, but I have never wished something so much! I will always treasure these early days of hours spent glued to the couch with a baby that won't sleep anywhere but in my arms or on my chest or on the boob...the days of unwashed hair, smeared mascara from the day (or two) before, lunches eaten at 3, coffee reheated 4 times, and crying over spilled milk (literally)...the days spent quietly as a family of 3 before Jeff went back to work, and the quiet (or not so quiet) eves spent together. I've been selfish with my time with Brody and with Jeff, and I don't regret it one bit. I can enjoy these new and exciting days of growth, development and change knowing I've savored each moment, even the hard ones. Because some day, my precious baby won't want to cuddle or be rocked to sleep or need me to feed him. This is hard to remind myself when I'm putting the pacifier back in for the umpteenth time or rocking him for the next hour or seeing his eyes spring open yet again or hearing his cries get louder...but when he finally snuggles in asleep, it's all I can think about.

I had several mild panic moments in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep, about how little Brody was spending doing tummy time. I was paranoid I wasn't giving him enough time and because of his spitting up, that he was gonna get a flat head with how much I keep him in the rock and play and couldn't put him on his stomach and that he would have delayed motor development blah blah...so I started giving him just a minute or two at a time like right after a diaper change to have some consistent times that I did it, and like 4 days ago he decided it wasn't so terrible and can tolerate it much longer and actually seems to enjoy it more! He always would do fine before, but sometimes would just lay there till he spit up and rolled his face around in it and then he was donezo. NOW, he can hold head up for much longer, can look around now, and is holding his head up even better when held. He seems to even enjoy it now. My friend who's an infant development professional told me that it's easier once babies are stronger, and that definitely seems to be the case! He also loves being held standing up, and practices "stepping." We are definitely going to need to get a bouncy thing for him soon...

We've been enjoying our life as a family, getting out more, and starting new routines. Brody loves being in the carrier, which has mostly been the Ergo with mom, but Dad is starting to carry him in the Bjorn more! We try to take a family walk every night. Brody usually will snooze, but often wakes up to look around at all the sights - he's so aware, and observant - loves to look at EVERYTHING. 

 Brody's already been to several breweries!! We met up with friends for Mommy's birthday & our friend Jordan's birthday at Populuxe in Ballard, and then went to Stoup Brewing with some other friends recently. We love the culture of Seattle, and especially Ballard, that allows kids and dogs at all of the breweries. It's nice to continue doing things that we love, and to enjoy being with our friends still. Brody is typically pretty flexible during these outings to fall asleep in the carrier, or take a bottle, or get fed in the car.

Daddy did the Tough Mudder a couple weeks ago! Mommy and Brody wandered around all over the course to watch him and his team go through the obstacles. It was a lot of fun, and I was so impressed with the team and also how the whole event was team-focused. Brody enjoyed being in the Ergo for most of the day, but then needed a break and we got out the stroller. Feeding on the go is getting much easier, but Mom (and Brody) hate the stupid nursing cover! 

We are just loving our smiley happy boy! He always wakes up in the morning with a smile on his face, and could spend ALL day looking at us and smiling. He still is loving his play mat, reaching and grabbing for his toys, playing with his hands, and finding his voice! He can copy some sounds, and loves to have "conversations." His sleep routine has gone a little bit backwards recently, but he's still a great sleeper at night. It's just a struggle getting him to sleep for good naps during the day, and in the evenings, he's having a harder time settling down. Usually he gets to come snuggle in bed with Mommy once Daddy gets up for work - he misses those snuggles too, so we try to get those in on the weekends.

Mommy started her PEPS group last week, and is already really enjoying the group of women and their babies - it's such a great community, and a much needed place to share joys and struggles and ask each other questions. Next week, our leader is bringing a scale, so I'll have an updated weight for him. :) About a week ago at the doctor's, he was 14 lbs already!

Life with Brody these days...

Brody is 11 weeks old today, and as smiley as ever. :) I've realized I'm not really writing as many things down as I should, and I'm feeling SUPER guilty, since he's almost 3 months old! Gahh! I have been writing down details, such as his first "real" smile (August 8), his first bath (July 17), and have been taking a bajillion photos and videos. SO - I've decided to try to keep track of things here, and I figure the family won't mind one bit... ;)

It's fitting to continue using our Europe trip blog, since "Wonder as we wander" describes everything it is to be a growing child, and a new parent. I *wonder* so much every day as I wander through the day with Brody, how he is seeing the world, what he thinks, what new things he will do. I have been waiting to be a mommy since forever, and every day I think I could never love this little monkey more, and each day somehow I love him more than the day before. I love seeing Jeff as a daddy, and it's brought us closer together in ways I never would have imagined, and some ways that I knew (so thankful we can laugh together at middle of the night messes!) ... I could never imagine a better partner to have in this journey of parenthood. OK, enough with that mushy stuff - let's get on with what's happening with the Brodester. 

Brody is 11 weeks old. Last week at the doctor's, he weighed 12 lbs 14.5 oz (54%) He was 23 3/4 inches long (71%). His favorite things right now are playing with his hands, either in fists, touching his hands together, munching on them, or today his favorite was holding one or both fists in the air. 

He still loves kicking his legs like crazy, is doing really well with his head control when we hold him up, but hates tummy time. I know there's some opinions about avoiding doing any unnatural movements with baby (i.e. early supported sitting with aids like pillows/bumbo seats, etc. and tummy time) until they are able to do them on their own, so I'll just remember that to avoid feeling guilty about how little B actually does spend on his tummy. He spits up so much, it's actually really hard to put him on his tummy, because there is very little time during the day when he is far enough from a feeding that he won't spit up! 

He absolutely loves his baths! His last bath, he ended up kicking and splashing his legs toward the end of it, and smiled when he realized how fun that was! He got Daddy all wet, too! 

Our typical days start off around when Jeff has to wake up and go to the gym before work around 4:00 am-ish. Usually around then, B is ready for his first morning feed, unless he's being "super baby", and sleeping late (6:30ish). After a feeding, B will be ready to take another morning snooze, and usually I let him sleep on my chest, but lately he's been able to go down for a few more hours, so I'll put him back in the co-sleeper. Then we have one or two morning naps before Noon, and we might do an outing to meet a friend or run a couple errands. He'll usually sleep in his carseat in the car or in the stroller. Afternoon is usually playtime at our house, unless we flip flop activities/errands. He will usually take a longer afternoon nap (usually if I sleep with him), but lately it's been split up into a couple shorter naps. He'll take one late afternoon/early evening nap, and then his last feeding will be around 6-7ish, and he'll go to sleep. Most nights he actually goes to sleep and stays asleep all night (!) - where did this angel baby come from?! - and sometimes he'll wake up again at 9-10pm when we're going to bed, and I'll feed him again and he'll go back down. 

I am so completely, absolutely, wholeheartedly loving my days with Brody. I'm so grateful that Jeff is loving his job at Microsoft, and we are blessed to be able to have me home with the munchkin. I have my private practice still, and a very limited number of clients. Thankfully, Jeff is able to be home when I have to go down to my office, and I'm able to feed B right before I go, and Jeff can give him a bottle if he needs it while I'm gone. Eventually I'll work up to getting some more clients, and I have plans to try to teach some classes too... but right now, I'm soaking up every second of little man's life, and will think about work later! 

Maybe I'll try to post about some earlier stuff as I have the time... like Brody's birth story, and his early days. :) But that's all for now, folks! 

After the trip thoughts - packing

So I decided I wanted to keep posting for a little bit on some of the tips and tricks we learned, and what we did that worked or didn't ... when we were preparing for our trip I scoured the internet for blogs from "normal" people for their packing tips, especially for packing light in small carry on backpacks for those budget airlines.

For the 2 people that read this who aren't my family, I thought I'd share about our packing. 

I packed in a 38 liter Gregory Jade pack. EasyJet's carry on requirement was 50x40x20cm, just barely under the "normal" carry on size we are used to in the U.S. The other issue is that they only allow 1 bag per person. Not 1 bag and a purse, but ONE BAG. And they checked. So when packing, I had to be sure everything fit in my backpack, but that it also had room to squish my purse in it last minute before boarding. The plus with a backpack - they were a little more lenient if they saw you carrying a reasonable sized backpack. They didn't question us, but we did see people with slightly larger, more packed out backpacks get stopped and checked for size.

 The above photo shows my full backpack, with the outfit I wore on the plane - heaviest/bulkiest clothing. It worked well to carry my coats over my arm, if I needed a little extra room in my bag.

 These pictures detail everything I packed for our 3 week trip. Our trip was in the fall, and the weather was much colder than expected, so I was very happy with all the layers I brought.

Clothing:
2 tanktops
2 t-shirts (quick dry)
1 longsleeved t-shirt
1 sweater
1 warmer baselayer
1 flannel
1 pair Lululemon cropped tights
1 pair shorts
1 skirt
1 pair of skinny-ish jeans
1 pair hiking pants
3 short smartwool socks
1 long smartwool sock
4 pairs quick dry undies
1 sports bra
1 regular bra
2 scarves
1 hat
1 pair gloves
1 belt
*All of this, I fit into 2 small packing cubes. ROLL all of your clothes, as tightly as possible. Those packing cubes can hold more than you think, and when packing in a backpack are invaluable. You don't want to have to take out all of your clothes one item at a time when finding something at the bottom of your bag.

Shoes:
Keen low hikers
Born leather boots
Toms (wore twice)
Chacos (wore once)

Jackets:
1 rain jacket
1 warmer fleece jacket
1 lightweight down jacket

Extras:
1 pack towel (helpful for squeezing out extra water from clothes when doing laundry)
1 travel-sized brush
glasses case, glasses
1 quart-sized bag of liquids (including packets of Woolite for doing laundry in the sink, and 1 pair of extra contacts! With all the trains/planes, my contacts dried out super fast!)
1 small makeup bag (necessities only!)
1 necklace, 1 extra pair of earrings
travel sized package of face wipes (a MUST for waking up after a night train...)
1 small bag of electronics (phone charger, camera charger + batteries, multi-country plug adapter)
camera
Kindle
Small purse
(I did not bring the water bottle shown)

Jeff brought our travel clothesline (which didn't really work), extra chargers, the iPad, the Surface, which we were going to use to offload pics onto (which didn't work), and his own clothing, etc.

Things I would have packed differently:
Underwear - definitely a must to have quick-dry undies, but would have been nice to have 1 or 2 cotton pairs for variety
Pants - would have liked one more pair of pants, jeans or otherwise, but space-wise, might have been hard to fit.
Shoes - didn't wear Toms or Chacos like I thought - our hostel showers were spotless, since we were in private rooms, and it was much colder than we planned, so another pair of nicer walking shoes would have been nice.

Overall, all 4 of us were happy with what we brought, and maybe would only change a couple things about what we packed. We had to get creative with mixing and matching... we were sick of our clothes by the end of our trip, but so glad we packed light!!

Photo Time

Sifting through all of the photos! This is going to take a while... so thankful for this amazing trip and amazing friends to have shared it with. We tried hard to write down as much as we could as we went, and to take as many pictures as possible, but it's so hard to capture everything we did. So many things packed into our 3 week trip. I'll keep posting for a while on here just so we can remember different parts of our trip, and to add some extra tips that we learned while we traveled. :) 

Us at the Old Man of Storr, on Isle of Skye

We made it home!

Spotty internet made it so that I couldn't post until now - but we're finally home!

We had a rainy drive from our B&B in Portree through Oban, along Loch Ness and into Inverness. Beautiful though - it was nice to see the different countryside once on the mainland vs. what we had been seeing on the islands. There were actually some fall colors in the trees on the mainland!! :) We all felt like we kind of had been missing out on fall, as most of Europe was "behind" in terms of the trees changing colors. Plus, we felt we had missed out on true "Scottish" weather, as it was gloriously sunny the whole time we were there.

We had our last EasyJet flight from Inverness to London, and were happy to leave those small, slow, budget flights behind us. London's airport experience was excellent - we flew into Gatwick, and then had to transfer to Heathrow for our flight into Reykjavik. We grabbed a taxi, and we FLEW down the highway. Glad we paid a little extra for this convenience, instead of trying to figure out the buses, or otherwise. At this point in our trip, we were done trying to figure out and coordinate more public transport options. Our taxi driver even solved the mystery of what the little mini "coffee cup" symbol was on our rental car dash - apparently, it's a function that will flash a signal at you if you start to get tired and drift on the road. :)

We had several hours to kill in London, but not enough to get into the main city, so we became familiar with the airport... otherwise known as we got very familiar with the Tin Goose Bar for a few hours.

We finally made it to Reykjavik, but landed at 11:30pm at night. Thanks to the tips from the awesome lady at the Icelandair check-in desk in Heathrow, we found out we couldn't sleep in the airport as planned, and ended up booking a last-minute hostel during one of our free 45-minute windows of wifi before our flight. We also found out how to book a bus ticket from the airport to the main town of Reykjavik (1 hr bus ride) ahead of time... so we finally ended up in Reykjavik at 12:30am. Then we asked this burly Icelandic guy in the bus station how to get to our hostel... and wandered the streets for a while wondering if he gave us bad directions. We ended up at our hostel, to find the door locked, and after ringing the bell a few times, the sleepy guy on duty showed up. A few more hilarious incidents later, we were able to crash for a few hours. Woke up the next morning, and took a speedy tour on crappy bikes through the town of Reykjavik (mine had minimal brakes and couldn't shift above 3rd gear). Rode along the waterfront, rode to the local municipal pool, that had a variety of different pools, hot tubs, all geothermally heated, and a crazy fun waterslide that a nice couple at our B&B on Skye told us about. Much cheaper than the Blue Lagoon, and way easier to get to - plus a little more fun! Amy and I had an adventure in the locker room getting told by a no-nonsense Icelandic woman to "get naked" as it's a rule all across Iceland to strip and wash completely before entering any of their pools - since they are all natural (chlorine-free) you have to get completely clean before you use them. Makes sense, but was quite the experience!! After our super fast and EXPENSIVE experience in Iceland, we made it back to the airport, and got on our long flight back home.

Pizza was ordered, and good local beer was had (there was a sad lack of good beer everywhere except for Germany) ... and we all fell asleep by 8:00pm watching Skyfall. Sad for our trip to end, and for our dear friends to go home, but we will have memories for a lifetime! 

From Islay to Skye

Haven't written in a bit because we have been adventuring as usual! we took the 4 hour ferry from Isle of Islay to Oban, on the mainland of Scotland. It was a beautiful ride, super windy and felt like classic Scotland. Everyone has been telling us the nice weather we have had is rather unusual so it was nice to feel the "real" weather a little bit. We stopped in at Oban Distillery, of course, and then headed up the coast to Skye. We got in late-ish to our B&B and Peter greeted us saying "I thought I was expecting French people!" Because of our last name. :)
We are in the cutest little B&B on the harbor at Portree. Excellent full Scottish breakfasts every morning. Our hosts have been super helpful in suggestions for our day trips.
Yesterday we made it to Talisker Distillery, #10! We took in the gorgeous scenery, got a little lost in the hills, literally, and enjoyed walking through the town. We also did a short hike to the Fairy Pools (aka waterfalls) which were beautiful. The clearest water I have ever seen, in a series of waterfalls through a small valley, with sheep grazing at the foot of the mountain. :)
Today we went and hiked up to the Old Man of Storr, among the sheep! Some of those sheep were braver than me with how high they were climbing. Gorgeous hike, cant wait to share pictures! Got lost again trying to find another hike, found Kilt Rock, another waterfall this time shooting over a cliff into the sea. Had a picnic by another harbor town, found a brewery (more on their lackluster beer later) and then came back early to pack :(
Was up to the guys to figure out how to get all their Scotch in our bags for the trip home...
Tomorrow we drive to the Inverness airport, fly to London, then to Iceland for 17 hrs. Then from Iceland home. Probably wont have WiFi in between, but who knows. We get home Sunday eve!